Klitschko “leaked” a complex of historical and cultural monuments on Podil to Yanukovych’s man

For more than a decade, the Kyiv community has been trying to preserve a complex of historic buildings at 2 Khoryva Street, which is located in the very center of historical Kyiv – Podil. In 2021, the Kyiv Economic Court cancelled the registration of ownership rights of PE (private enterprise) “Konvaliya-Nerukhomist” to the complex of historical and cultural monuments on Khoryva Street, 2.Kyiv activists began to demand that the city authorities formally register the return of the buildings Khoryva 2 (letters А, Б, В, Г, Д, Є, Ж, З). But now it has become known that “Konvaliya-Nerukhomist” has again registered the right of ownership to the same buildings.

«The courts are still fighting to preserve the status of an object of cultural heritage, and there are at least two of them (Case No.640/27974/21 and Case No.826/10888/18). It would seem that justice prevails – a couple of years ago, the Kyiv Economic Court canceled the registration of private ownership rights of PE “Konvaliya-Nerukhomist” to the buildings on Khoryva, 2, that is, returned them to communal ownership (decision of 11.17.2021). This decision was upheld by the Decree of the Northern Court of Appeal for Economic Affairs of December 13, 2022 (entered into force) and the Resolution of the Supreme Court of March 7, 2023. And what did the winners of the court battles do – the Kyiv City Council and the Department of Communal Property of the Kyiv City State Administration? The point is that – NOTHING. And thanks to this “nothing” on the part of the city authorities, who did not register the right of communal ownership of the city to these buildings, “Konvaliya-
Nerukhomist” literally a few weeks ago (from March 23 to April 1, 2024) brazenly reregistered ownership rights
to the same buildings, based on the same old documents – adding extracts from the State Register of Construction Activities (which are hidden and do not open)», – wrote on this occasion a well-known Kyiv defender of recreational zones and cultural heritage of the capital, lawyer Oleksandr Dyadyuk.

Dyadyuk notes that the scam itself with the buildings on Khoryva, 2, unfortunately, is one of numerous scams at that time, in essence, the theft of communal property, through so-called investment contracts.

«The essence of the “scheme” is as follows: a simple “investment agreement” is concluded, according to which the developer literally for pennies receives communal property with the right to demolition (or reconstruction), while the developer receives EVERYTHING – and the city budget, a few pennies of the “final cost” of the buildings. And what is the “final cost” of those old buildings? – close to zero. At the same time, the market value of the “right to build”, which is at least 15-20%, and which the owner of the land (the city community) should receive from what should be built on the corresponding site, is not taken into account – and this is tens, or even hundreds of times more than the miserable “residual value”. It was according to this corruption scheme that the “greedy for dough” officials of the Podil District Council and the Podil District State Administration in 2007-2010 and stole from the communal ownership of the city these buildings in the interests of “Konvaliya-Nerukhomist», – Dyadyuk wrote.

History of Resistance

In 1998, the four-story building at the specified address was completely renovated at the city’s expense. However, in 2012, the municipal authorities include the building in the list of “obsolete” (“dilapidated”) housing stock, and the Podil District Administration gradually begins to look for investors for the reconstruction of the building complex at Khoryva-2 (2a, 2б, 2в, 2г, 2д). Probably for 14 years, since the previous renovation, the city budget did not have enough money.

But that’s beside the point, because to rescue the impoverished city budget (in 2012 – more than 16 billion UAH), from which the respective buildings are renovated, the investment company PE ” Konvaliya-Nerukhomist ” came to the rescue, it kindly agreed, at its own expense, to relocate the residents of the building in exchange for a plot of land where the entire building complex is located. And this, for a minute, is an area of 2.5 hectares in the very center of the city!

On December 29, 2017, public activists, together with the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Executive Body of the Kyiv City Council, managed to stop the destruction of the monument. Directive Order No. 425/p of the Department obliged the entrepreneurs to stop any construction work at the facility, and already on January 20, 2018, a criminal case was opened against the горе-developers under Part 2 of Art. 298 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – deliberate illegal destruction, destruction or damage to objects of cultural heritage or their parts.

For a year, the company’s lawyers wandered between courts, which consistently refused to satisfy the developer’s demands, but already in the summer of 2019, the already famous Okruzhnoy Administrative Court of the city of Kyiv, re-examining the case, nevertheless found separate grounds for opening proceedings.

According to the information of the Department of Land Resources of the Executive Body of the Kyiv City Council (Kyiv City State Administration), the land plot of the estate complex at Khoryva, 2, as of 2019, was estimated at UAH 58,407,732.8. At the same time, the tenant had to pay only 5% of this amount annually. And PE “Konvalia-
Neruchomast” is ready to conscientiously pay the rent, but … only until it implements its construction project.

According to Part 1 of Article 125 of the Land Code of Ukraine, the person who acquired ownership rights to a residential building, structure, or facility located on a land plot owned by another person acquires ownership rights to the land plot or its part on which they are located without changing its designated purpose.

Victory in Courts

On November 17, 2021, the Kyiv Commercial Court in case No.910/8298/21 canceled the registration of ownership of PE “Konvalia-Neruchomast” for the complex of historical and cultural monuments on Khoryva Street, 2. The decision is motivated by the improper use of cultural heritage sites and an incomplete package of documents that could certify the legality of the transfer of monuments to private ownership.

The owner of the private enterprise “Konvaliya-Nerukhomist” is Victoria Rogach. According to the publication “NASHI GROSHI,” Rogach is a lawyer at “Juridical Firm Proksen and Partners.” At the same time, Roman Shingur, who is the director of “Konyaliya-Nerukhomist,” is the deputy director of the same law firm. From the 1990s until 2004, Shingur was a co-founder of PE “Rom Marketing” together with Mykhailo Okhendovsky and Oleg Shevchuk.

Oleg Shevchuk, in particular, is the head of the law firm “Proksen”. This firm was founded by 14 people, including, in particular, the head of the Central Election Commission of Ukraine (2013-2018) Mykhailo Okhendovsky, ex-Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of Ukraine Oleksiy Filatov (2014-2019), advisor to the mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko Serhiy Levada, and others. Moreover, in 1990, the co-founder and partner of the law firm “Proksen”, which received license No. 1 from the Ministry of Justice for the practice of law in Ukraine, was the former head of the High Qualification Commission of Judges Sergiy Koz’yakov, who in 2019 was deprived of his powers as head of the High Qualification Commission by the Kyiv District Administrative Court.

Most of the contracts for the sale and purchase of apartments in favor of “Konvalia-Neruhimost” were registered by the notary Kateryna Okhendovska, the wife of the ex-head of the Central Election Commission Mykhailo Okhendovsky. In January 2020, the Podiльs’ke District Police Department of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kyiv opened a criminal case on the fact of possible forgery of documents, which were certified by Okhendovsky’s wife. And already in 2021, during the consideration of the case in the Commercial Court, it turned out that 4 out of 5 buildings of the complex were generally transferred to the enterprise as “auxiliary premises”. However, even for them, lawyer Oleg Shevchuk, who represented the interests of the developer in this case, could not provide documents of the established form. Therefore, three years ago, the registration of ownership rights was recognized as illegal, and the property itself should have returned to the municipal ownership of Kyiv. But now, as it became known, it is again the property of the scandalous company.

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